Dr. Jim Taylor's blog

When I was growing up, my world was filled with heroes. There were John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Carl Yastrzemski. These icons represented everything good about America: strong, principled, humble, and decent. They led exemplary lives, worked hard, and cared about the world in which they lived. As an impressionable boy, I saw them regularly on television and read about them in magazines and newspapers, and, because of their iconic status, I looked up to them, I wanted to be them. Our country was replete with politicians, titans of business, civic leaders, athletes, and entertainers who I could have said, “I want to grow up to be just like them.” And, even in retrospect, they seemed like role models worthy of my emulation.

But in 21^st century America, I ask myself: Where have all our heroes gone? I look at the iconic figures of today, the influential people that our children see on television and in the movies, and read about in magazines and newspapers and on the Internet, and I have a hard time finding anyone whom I can call a hero. Many people today see those in the spotlight as far from heroic: politicians are self-glorifying panderers, corporate leaders are greedy and corrupt, athletes are entitled and irresponsible, and entertainers are spoiled and aloof. There are exceptions, of course, but they rarely get the attention they’re due. There just aren’t many people in the public eye these day for whom I can say, “I would like my children to grow up to be just like them.”

Yet heroes are essential to children’s development. They convey the values that reflect the best that society has to offer. They influence the choices children make-what would my hero do in this situation? And heroes act as role models, shaping children through their words and deeds. Charles Barkley, the former NBA star, once famously said, “I am not a role model.” But he, and others like him, are role models whether they like it or not.

The heroes that emerge in a generation are the living manifestation of the zeitgeist of the times. In past generations, children’s heroes were mostly agents of good-of course, every generation has antiheroes, but they were the exception rather than the rule (remember James Dean and KISS). They inspired children to goodness and great deeds. Heroes were courageous and strong and helped children to be brave when facing their fears. They set the bar high on standards of behavior, being kind, compassionate, generous, and humble-you never saw Superman trash talking the villains. Heroes gave hope to children when they were worried because kids believed that there was someone out there who could protect them. Most importantly, heroes always did the right thing; they protected the weak, vanquished evil, and set things right.

Today’s zeitgeist is vastly different, controlled by a popular culture that worships the antihero. Many of today’s entertainers, athletes, and other popular culture icons exemplify everything that is unheroic in our society-50 Cent and Britney Spears, Terrell Owens, Paris Hilton and Russell Crowe-yet are seen as heroes in the eyes of children. Many of today’s heroes encourage values that are also unheroic, such as selfishness, dishonesty, disrespect, irresponsibility, greed, cruelty, violence, and promiscuity. It seems like the best we can hope for these days are heroes that are at most benign rather than harmful. A survey I conducted recently with kids indicated that these “minimal damage” heroes include Hilary Duff, Brad Pitt, and Shaquille O’Neal. Not antiheroes by any means, but also not genuine heroes either. They’re heroes to children mainly because they’re attractive, rich, and famous, not for any redeeming qualities they may have.

So where can we find real heroes for our children today? You might argue that kids’ heroes should be their parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults in their lives. And I agree wholeheartedly. But that is rarely the case, particularly as the influence of popular culture on children grows. These everyday people are far too ordinary and too close to children to be their heroes. Kids need to place their heroes on pedestals. That’s what gives heroes their power-they’re somehow different from ordinary mortals-and causes children to want to emulate them. And there are genuine heroes out there, for example, the police and firefighters who died on 9/11 and the soldiers who are fighting in Iraq. Unfortunately, their time in the spotlight is too short to remain heroes. As children’s attention is drawn elsewhere and the memory of their heroics fades, so does their influence as heroes.

Because popular culture won’t shine a steady spotlight on real heroes, parents must make children aware of people who are actually deserving of their admiration. Parents need to talk to their children about what makes a hero and, in doing so, teach them about the values and beliefs that are exemplified by real heroes. Just as importantly, parents must learn who are the antiheroes being pushed on their children by popular culture and explain why they’re actually unheroic. Believe it or not, there are real heroes out there; politicians, business and civic leaders, athletes, and entertainers-Nelson Mandela, Geoffrey Canada, Roger Federer, Bono-who actually embody the best of what the world represents and they have to be kept in children’s field of vision by parents so they can be seen for the real heroes that they are.

I was all ready to discuss another topic in this issue of Kids & Culture Alert! when I received the following email from a reader the other day:

“There is a huge difference between telling a child to ‘suck it up’ and do their homework, and telling them to suck it up when dealing with emotions. My son reads your advice and interprets that any time his five-year-old son whines at all he needs to suck it up.”

Of course, no parent likes to hear their children whine. It’s frustrating and just plain irritating. It’s easy to think that you have a whiny child and that you need to nip that behavior in the bud by just telling them to shut up (especially when a newsletter from a so-called parenting expert seems to advocate that approach!).

But let me be very clear, though I totally support teaching your children to ‘suck it up’ when they complain about having to do something that they would rather not, I do not by any means suggest that you should tell them to ‘shut up’ when they are expressing their emotions—even though that is what you would love to do sometimes!

The fact is that your children’s emotions are the most essential, yet most neglected, aspect of their development. Most essential because there is nothing more important to your children’s future success and happiness than the development of what I call emotional mastery. Most neglected because, despite their importance, children don’t take classes in emotions nor do they learn it from their parents in any thorough way.

Emotional Overprotection

In attempting to protect their children from feeling badly, many parents prevent them from feeling emotions at all in the mistaken belief that feeling emotions, such as anger, sadness, frustration, or pain, will somehow scar their children for life. To the contrary, not feeling so-called bad emotions hurts children in two ways. First, emotions are like two sides of the same coin; children can’t feel good emotions, such as excitement, joy, and inspiration, unless they are allowed to feel the bad emotions too. Second, without feeling bad emotions children never learn to deal with those emotions. This protection leaves children wholly unprepared for the “real world” where bad emotions are just a part of life.

Not-so-obvious Emotions

The challenge for parents, like the one referred to in the email above, is to be able to look beneath the irritation of the emotions that are most readily evident and get at the true emotions that your children are experiencing. For example, when children have a temper tantrum, anger is rarely the real emotion. It’s easy to label a child as having “anger management” issues or as “acting out,” but these are just labels assigned by parents and mental-health professionals in an attempt to simplify the incredible complexity of human beings. Anger is a defensive emotion aimed at protecting children (and adults) from more painful emotions such as fear, sadness, and humiliation. Whininess is the overt expression of children feeling frustrated, not getting their needs met, or feeling out of control (all of which, I might add, is a normal part of being a kid). When you understand the true emotions your children are feeling, you are then in a position to teach them how to become masters rather than victims of their emotions.

Parents as Emotional Masters

Your children learn their most basic emotional habits from you through observation and modeling. The development of emotional mastery is greatly facilitated when you possess the qualities that your children need to learn. The reality is though that most parents—like most people—carry with them some unhealthy emotional baggage and habits from their childhoods that, if left unchecked, will be passed on to their children. If you are an emotional victim, it is likely that, unless your children have other strong role models to influence them, they too will become emotional victims. If you are an emotional master, you have a good start on instilling positive emotional habits in them. One of the strongest recommendations I can make to you is to explore your emotional life and ensure that you are capable of teaching your children to be emotional masters.

Emotional Coaching

Emotional mastery is not about not feeling emotions or suppressing the emotions that your children feel. Instead, it involves children being able to recognize what emotion they are experiencing, understand what is causing the emotion, and being able to express the emotion in a healthy way.

You can facilitate your children’s understanding by engaging in “emotional coaching,” in which you guide your children in the exploration of their emotional worlds. Identify situations as opportunities for them to learn about their emotions, such as hurt feelings over a disappointing performance or anger over a conflict with a friend. Children can easily separate negative from positive emotions, but only with experience can they learn the differences between different negative emotions. When your children feel bad, they need to be able to distinguish whether they are, for example, fearful, angry, frustrated, sad, or hurt. Describe different ways a person might feel in that situation and compare those feelings with what they are feeling at the moment. Research has shown that emotional coaching can act as a buffer against a variety of psychological problems and children who are coached emotionally focus more effectively, are better learners, and do better in school.

Children can get so wrapped up in the negative emotions of the moment that they are unable to step back and see that their reactions are not serving them well. This is a point at which you can intervene. For example, here’s a conversation you can have with your children when they begin to lose it emotionally. Ask the following questions (and try to elicit something akin the following responses):

• “What emotions are you feeling right now?” (“I’m frustrated and really mad.”);
• “Are these emotions helping or hurting you?” (“They’re hurting me.”);
• “If you continue to feel this way, will things get better or worse?” (“Worse.”);
• “Do you want to continue down this road or do you want to turn it around?” (“I want to turn it around.”);
• “What do you need to do to turn it around?” (“I need to take some deep breaths, and figure out the cause of my frustration.”)

With your help both as a role model and an emotional coach, your children can learn to recognize and identify their emotions. They can then search themselves and their environment for possible causes of their emotional reactions. Seeing the reasons for their feelings provides children with further information about the emotional experience and gives them greater understanding and control over what they feel. This process also encourages your children to “step back” from their emotions, which lessens their intensity and impact. It also provides your children with the opportunity to express what they feel in a healthy way that serves them best.

Be Patient

Developing emotional mastery is a life-long process that requires awareness and practice. Your power as a parent lies in your ability to send positive daily messages about emotions and look for teachable moments in which to instill emotional mastery. Each time your children make the right choice, they are making it easier to choose the next time. The great thing about emotional mastery is that it is self-rewarding. When your children make the correct choice, they not only feel better, they also do better. The ultimate goal of emotional mastery is for your children to be able to fully experience the entire spectrum of emotions, embrace the positive emotions, and resolve in a healthy way the negative emotions.

Motivation lies at the base of the Prime Sport pyramid. Without your desire and determination to improve your sports performances, all of the other mental factors, confidence, intensity, focus, and emotions, are meaningless. To become the best athlete you can be, you must be motivated to do what it takes to maximize your ability.

Motivation, simply defined, is the ability to initiate and persist at a task. To perform your best, you must want to begin the process of developing as an athlete and you must be willing to maintain your efforts until you have achieved your goals. Motivation in sports is so important because you must be willing to work hard in the face of fatigue, boredom, pain, and the desire to do other things. Motivation will impact everything that influences your sports performance: physical conditioning, technical and tactical training, mental preparation, and general lifestyle including sleep, diet, school or work, and relationships.

The reason motivation is so important is that it is the only contributor to sports performance over which you have control. My There are three things that affect how well you perform. First, your ability, which includes your physical, technical, tactical, and mental capabilities. Because ability is something you are born with, you can’t change your ability so it is outside of your control.

Second, the difficulty of the competition influences performance. Contributors to difficulty include the ability of the opponent and external factors such as an “away game” crowd and weather such as temperature, wind, and sun. You have no control over these factors.

Finally, motivation will impact performance. It is also the only factor over which you have control. Motivation will directly impact the level of success that you ultimately achieve. If you are highly motivated to improve your performances, then you will put in the time and effort necessary to raise your game. Motivation will also influence the level of performance when you begin a competition. If they’re competing against someone of nearly equal skill, it will not be ability that will determine the outcome. Rather, it will be the athlete who works the hardest, who doesn’t give up, and who performs their best when it counts. In other words, the athlete who is most motivated to win.

The Grind

In training and competitions, you arrive at a point at which it is no longer fun. I call this the Grind, which starts when it gets tiring, painful, and tedious. the Grind is also the point at which it really counts. The Grind is what separates successful athletes from those who don’t achieve their goals. Many athletes when they reach this point either ease up or give up because it’s just too darned hard. But truly motivated athletes reach the Grind and keep on going.

Many sport psychologists will say that you have to love the Grind. I say that, except for a very few hyper-motivated athletes, love isn’t in the cards because there’s not much to love. But how you respond to the Grind lies along a continuum. As I just mentioned, loving the Grind is rare. At the other end of the continuum is “I hate the Grind.” If you feel this way, you are not likely to stay motivated. I suggest that you neither love nor hate the Grind; you just accept it as part of the deal in striving toward your goals. The Grind may not be very enjoyable, but what does feel good is seeing your hard work pay off with success.

Effort = Goals?

When I speak to groups of young athletes, I always ask how many have big goals, like going to the Olympics or playing pro ball. About 90% raise their hands. I then ask how many are doing everything they can to achieve their goals. Only one or two tentative hands go up. What this tells me is that there is often a big gap between the goals athletes have and the effort they are putting into those goals. It’s easy to say that you want to be a successful athlete. It is much more difficult to actually make it happen. If you have this kind of disconnect, you have two choices. You can either lower goals to match your effort or you can raise your effort to match your goals. There is no right answer. But if you’re truly motivated to be successful, you better make sure you’re doing the work necessary to achieve your goals.

Signs of Low Motivation

There are several signs of low motivation:

• A lack of desire to practice as much as you should.
• Less than 100% effort in training.
• Skipping or shortening training.
• Effort that is inconsistent with your goals.

Three D’s

Prime motivation means putting 100% of your time, effort, energy, and focus into all aspects of your sport. It involves doing everything possible to become the best athlete you can be.

Prime motivation begins with what I call the three D’s. The first D stands for direction. Before you can attain prime motivation, you must first consider the different directions you can go in your sport. You have three choices: stop participating completely, continue at your current level, or strive to be the best athlete you can be.

The second D represents decision. With these three choices of direction, you must select one direction in which to go. None of these directions are necessarily right or wrong, better or worse, they’re simply your options. Your choice will dictate the amount of time and effort you will put into your sport and how good an athlete you will ultimately become.

The third D stands for dedication. Once you’ve made your decision, you must dedicate yourself to it. If your decision is to become the best athlete you can be, then this last step, dedication, will determine whether you have prime motivation. Your decision to be your best and your dedication to your sport must be a top priority. Only by being completely dedicated to your direction and decision will you ensure that you have prime motivation.

Developing Prime Motivation

Focus on you long-term goals. To be your best, you have to put a lot of time and effort into your sport. But, as I noted above, there are going to be times—the Grind—when you don’t feel that motivated.

When you feel this way, focus on your long-term goals. Remind yourself why you’re working so hard. Imagine exactly what you want to accomplish and tell yourself that the only way you’ll be able to reach your goals is to continue to work hard.

Try to generate the feelings of inspiration and pride that you will experience when you reach your goals. This technique will distract you from the discomfort of the Grind, focus you on what you want to achieve, and generate positive thoughts and emotions that will get you through the Grind.

Have a training partner. It’s difficult to be highly motivated all of the time on your own. There are going to be some days when you just don’t feel like getting out there. Also, no matter how hard you push yourself, you will work that much harder if you have someone pushing you. That someone can be a coach, personal trainer, or parent. But the best person to have is a regular training partner, someone at about your level of ability and with similar goals. You can work together to accomplish your goals. The chances are on any given day that one of you will be motivated. Even if you’re not very psyched to practice on a particular day, you will still put in the time and effort because your partner is counting on you.

Focus on greatest competitor. Another way to keep yourself motivated is to focus on your greatest competitor. Identify who your biggest competition is and put his or her name or photo where you can see it every day. Ask yourself, “Am I working as hard as him/her?”  Remember that only by working your hardest will you have a chance to overcome your greatest competitor.

Motivational cues. A big part of staying motivated involves generating positive emotions associated with your efforts and achieving your goals. A way to keep those feelings is with motivational cues such as inspirational phrases and photographs. If you come across a quote or a picture that moves you, place it where you can see it regularly such as in your bedroom, on your refrigerator door, or in your locker. Look at it periodically and allow yourself to experience the emotions it creates in you. These reminders and the emotions associated with them will inspire and motivate you to continue to work hard toward your goals.

Set goals. There are few things more rewarding and motivating than setting a goal, putting effort toward the goal, and achieving the goal. The sense of accomplishment and validation of the effort makes you feel good and motivates you to strive higher. It’s valuable to establish clear goals of what you want to accomplish in your sport and how you will achieve those goals. Seeing that your hard work leads to progress and results should motivate you further to realize your goals.

Daily questions. Every day, you should ask yourself two questions. When you get up in the morning, ask, “What can I do today to become the best athlete I can be?”  and before you go to sleep, ask, “Did I do everything possible today to become the best athlete I can be?”  These two questions will remind you daily of what your goals are and will challenge you to be motivated to become your best.

The heart of motivation. A final point about motivation. The techniques I’ve just described are effective in increasing your short-term motivation. Motivation, though, is not something that can be given to you. Rather, motivation must ultimately come from within. You must simply want to participate in your sport. You just have to want it really bad.

Change is essential for your growth and development as a person and a business leader. Without change, you are assured of staying just the way you are, doing things just the way you have always done them, and performing at the same level that you always have. Your ability to maximize your performance and productivity depends on your ability to change in positive ways.

If there is something that you don’t like about yourself or you find something that is interfering with the pursuit of your goals, well, just change it. Seems simple, doesn’t it? But, as anyone who has ever tried to change knows, it is far from simple or easy. Change can be  slow, frustrating, and painful; it can also be engrossing and inspiring. Whether being a better boss, building your confidence in a new job, or dealing with work stress more effectively, change is the most difficult—yet rewarding—thing you will ever do.

So why is change so difficult? And how can change be fostered?

Obstacles to Change

There are four obstacles that prevent people from changing (or even attempting to change). First, like all of us, you bring good things into adulthood from your childhood and, as a human being, you likely also bring some not-so-good things, what is commonly called “baggage.” The most frequent types of baggage include low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure, need for control, anger, and need to please. This baggage, causes you to think, feel, and behave based on who you were as a child rather than the very different person you are now as an adult. Most of this baggage causes you to react to the world in a defensive way that can sabotage your efforts to achieve success.

Second, deeply ingrained habits in the way you think, experience emotions, and behave arise out this baggage, much like when athletes continue to practice bad technique, they become very good at the bad technique and that bad technique is what is executed in competition. In other words, you react to the world in a certain way because that’s the way you always have; these habits produce knee-jerk reactions that are no longer healthy or adaptive.

Third, you don’t make an effort to change because of negative emotions that you are experiencing, such as fear, anger, sadness, or frustration. For example, many people don’t change out of the fear of failure. They might think, “What if I can’t change, then I’ll prove myself to be even more of a failure than I am now.” They then say, “I’ve been this way for a long time and I’m getting by, so it’s not worth the risk.”

Fourth, you create an environment that helps you best manage your baggage, habits, and emotions. The people you surround ourselves with and the activities you participate in give you a sense of comfort and security. Unfortunately, this environment may, at a minimum, not support change or, at worst, discourage change.

In all four cases, remaining where you are has the effect of self-sabotage. You don’t perform up to your abilities and you don’t achieve your goals. You feel stuck, frustrated, and helpless to change your lot in life.

Foundation of Change

Yes, change is difficult, despite the “quick and without any effort” claims of motivational speakers and self-help books. But I’m sorry to say that change just doesn’t work that way. In attempting to change, you are swimming against the tide of many years of baggage, habits, emotions, and environment. But if you can overcome those obstacles and commit yourself to a new direction in your life, amazing things can happen.

Epiphany. Because change is so difficult, it must come from a very deep and personal place inside of you. Change starts with a simple, yet powerful, epiphany: “I just can’t continue down this same road any longer.” When you experience this realization in the most visceral way, then you have taken the first step toward change.

Emotions. Just as emotions can act as obstacles to change, they can also provide a powerful impetus to change. Whether positive, such as hope, inspiration, or pride, or negative, such as fear (of losing a job), emotions can be potent motivators for change.

Courage. Courage may be the single most important characteristic for changing your life because change requires risk and risk is scary because you may fail (of course, the other side of the coin is that only by taking risks can you truly succeed.). Courage to change means the willingness to acknowledge aspects of yourself that you may not know about or may not like, and to confront “bad” emotions you may feel as you learn about yourself. Courage enables you to reject your old self, chart a new course in your life, and then “boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Change is much like jumping into cold water. It will be a shock at first, and you will initially regret having taken the plunge. But, after you are in the water for a short while, you begin to adapt to the coldness. What was then intimidating is now approachable. What had been unknown is now familiar. What was then painful is now invigorating.

Leap of Faith. Unfortunately, there is no certainty in change. You don’t know if, when, or how you might change. And that lack of certainty can be truly terrifying. Yet, you must be willing to accept that uncertainty if you want to change. The only way to overcome your fears is to take a leap of faith. A great philosopher once said, “You do or you do not. There is no try.” No, it wasn’t Aristotle or Socrates who spoke those simple, yet profound words; the great thinker was…Yoda, the Jedi Master of Star Wars.

This leap of faith involves having a basic belief in yourself and a fundamental trust in the vision of who, what, and where you want to be in the future. The leap of faith involves your commitment to creating a new and healthy life and the belief that good things will happen when you do make that change.

Determination: The above contributors to the foundation of change result in determination to change, an unwavering commitment to resist the obstacles and pursue your goals. This resolve will motivate you to engage in the moment-to-moment process of change even when you are tired, bored, and frustrated.

Process of Change

The steps I just described set the stage for change, but the real work lies ahead. Change can be scary, tiring, frustrating, and repetitious. And change takes time. How much, you might ask. It depends on your ability to remove the four obstacles to change and embrace the foundation of change I discussed above and your ability to commit to the minute-to-minute process of change. But I have found that when someone makes a deep commitment to change, they can expect to see positive change in 6-12 months.

Explore your inner world. Perhaps the most difficult part of changing your life involves exploring your inner world. True change cannot just occur on the surface or outside of you. Change means not only understanding who you are, but also why you are who you are. The first step you must take is to identify the obstacles that are preventing you from changing. You need to “look in the mirror” and specify what the baggage, habits, emotions, and environment are that are keeping you from your goals. Understanding these obstacles takes the mystery out of who you are and what has been holding you back. It also gives you clarity on what you need to change.

These explorations of your inner world liberate you to move from the path you are on and to finally put the past behind you—when most of your life you have been putting your past in front of you.

Change goals. Establishing clear objectives of the changes you want to make will help you focus your efforts and direct your energy toward those changes. These goals should identify what areas you want to change, how you will change them, and the ultimate outcome you want to achieve. Moreover, the goals should be specific, objective, and time defined.

Action steps. Action steps describe the particular actions you will take to achieve your change goals. They may range from adhering to an exercise regimen to maintaining emotional control in a crisis situation to staying focused when surrounded by distractions. Action steps give you the specific tools you need to act on the world in the present and to give you alternative actions that counter your old baggage, habits, emotions, and environment.

Forks in the road. Taking the action steps and achieving your change goals depends on recognizing the good and bad forks in the road, having the determination to resist your baggage, habits, emotions, and environment, and choosing to take the good road.

Three P’s. One of the most difficult aspects of change is the need to make it a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and minute-to-minute process in which you commit yourself to change (Every time you miss an opportunity for change, you further ingrain your old baggage, habits, and emotions). A helpful reminder of this necessity is what I call the Three P’s.

The first P, persistence, means you must maintain your determination (a mindset) and drive (your actions) to achieve your goals consistently.

The second P, perseverance, refers to your ability to respond positively to setbacks you will surely experience in the change process.

The third P, patience, should be a constant reminder that change takes time and that if you maintain your commitment and persist and persevere, you will make the changes you want.

The Payoff

There is an immense payoff for your commitment and efforts at change: A life-altering shift in who you are and the direction that your life will take; maximizing performance and productivity; achieving your life goals. As a former client told me so poignantly: “I realized that I would never have to go back to the way I used to live my life, and I have never been so successful or happy!”

What attracts millions of Americans each week to this cultural phenomenon known as “reality TV?” Where did the purveyors of shows such as Survivor, The Apprentice, and American Idol, get the idea, and why do we buy into the idea that reality TV resembles reality in any way, shape, or form? Only in George Orwell’s 1984 reality can people be watched every moment of the day like on Big Brother. Only in William Gerald Golding’s Lord of the Flies reality can people “eliminate” one another on a desert island like on Survivor. Only in Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives reality are all of the women young, white, attractive, and slim like on The Bachelor. Only in Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes” reality do people whose only claim is that they won a reality TV show make them worthy of the fame and fortune of talk show appearances, book contracts, and speaking tours. Yet this is the “reality” of reality TV to which we are exposed and it is the reality that some of us may come to believe can be our reality.

Reality TV promotes the worst values and qualities in people-and disguises them all as entertainment. Reality TV has made the Seven Deadly Sins-pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth-attributes to be admired. Throw in selfishness, deceit, spite, and vengeance-all qualities seen routinely on reality TV-and you have the personification of the worst kind of person on Earth. Reality TV makes heroic decidedly unheroic values, characters, and behavior.

Why would popular culture want to communicate such destructive values, you may ask. The answer is, because our pop culture has no values; it’s amoral. It doesn’t care about us and it has no sense of social responsibility. Popular culture is concerned with only one thing: money, and it will do everything and sacrifice anything to achieve that end, including hurting the society it is meant to serve.

The messages that American popular culture sends us about success and failure-as communicated through the unreality of “reality” TV-are particularly destructive. Success, as defined by our culture and conveyed through reality TV-wealth and fame, most notably-is so revered, yet, in the reality in which most of us live, so utterly unattainable. We get the message from reality TV that we must become successful at any cost, even if success can be achieved only by dishonesty and subterfuge. The unfortunate results of these messages can be found throughout our culture. We see increased cheating in schools, the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, and criminal behavior in our youth and, among our adult population, lying on resumes, frivolous, profit-driven law suits, and corporate greed. Anything to become a success!

There is no worse fate in our culture than to be labeled a failure, yet, so narrowly defined by our culture (not being wealthy, famous, powerful, or beautiful), it is almost a certainty for most of us. Failure alone though is not punishment enough for the “losers” in reality TV. They must also be demeaned, dehumanized, and publicly humiliated. These losers must suffer the indignity of banishment from reality TV shows by hosts, such as the cold, yet venerated, Donald Trump-”You’re fired!” -and judges such as the mean-spirited Simon Cowell on American Idol. Despite this despicable behavior, we are encouraged to feel excitement and glee in seeing others suffer. As we cringe outwardly at the barbs that are thrown at the well-meaning contestants, we inwardly giggle in guilty pleasure at seeing them in pain. Most of our joy of reality TV is not in seeing contestants succeed, but rather in seeing them not only fail, but fail in the most humiliating ways. We celebrate every luscious moment of this depravity!

Why do so many of us not only watch reality TV, but become so consumed by it that there are Web sites, blogs, magazine and newspaper articles, and constant talk around the water cooler? One answer is vicarious stimulation. Reality TV is exciting when life is often mundane. It is interesting when life can be dull. Reality TV is dangerous when life can be all too secure. It is emotionally powerful-excitement, joy, embarrassment, shame-when life can be emotionally void.? And many of us want it that way because we are loath to take risks and feel so deeply in our own lives.

Reality TV has become the public executions of our times. We sit on the edge of our seats waiting eagerly for the guillotine to fall, yet we don’t want the end to come too quickly. We want to savor the lingering death of humiliation and shame. And when the “execution” finally occurs, we feel conflicted in enjoying others’ “deaths,” yet relief in our continued existences, guilty for the exhilaration we feel, yet giddy in knowing that we are a “survivor” of our own reality show called life. In these times of economic and global uncertainty, thanks to the contestants’ symbolic deaths on reality TV, we can return to our lives feeling somehow better, safer…that we are going to be okay.